For the last time, you cannot tell if Trump got more white women, black men or latinos in 2020.

[My Pet Orangutan]

Last edited Mon Nov 16, 2020, 07:17 AM - Edit history (1)

by looking at the exit polls. 2/3rds, 101 million, voted early, 65 million by mail-in. Emerson et al. did some scattered interviews on some days at early polling places but mainly relied on telephone polls.

The actual election day interview results were heavily skewed towards Trumpers. You can not compare the 2020 numbers with the on-the-day results from 2016. It's apples tp oranges.

Trump may have done (relatively) well with white women, black men and latinos , but the exit polls don't prove it.

[blm]

1. Saying same. This year's Election Day exit polls will skew GOP

because Dems heavily dominated early voting and mail in.

It’s like calling 700 Republican voters and 300 Dems and asking who they voted for.

[Hoyt]

2. Main thing is that he lost. But for such a cruddy Prez, it should have been by

at least 40 M votes.

[uponit7771]

14. +1, Obama won by 10 million votes but Bush lies didn't lead to 250,000 dead Americans by election

... time.

There were minimum 250,000 dead Iraqis though and that alone should've bought Bush a 1 term

3 republican presidents in my lifetime and 3 screwed up economies for the middle class under their rule and 73 million people vote for more of it?

Somethings aint right

[LeftInTX]

3. Trump picked up 300,000 votes in the Rio Grande Valley

This area is 95% Mexican American and Democratic. A few counties where Hillary won with 70% of the vote, flipped or Biden's winning margin was much smaller than Hillary's. Trump picked up lots of Latino votes there. Also even candidates like Henry Cuellar won by much smaller margins this time. We were even afraid one was gonna flip to Republican as we were looking at returns. Gonzalez won with 50.5%. In 2018, he got 59.7% and that seat has been Democratic since forever. Trump's courting of these voters may have added more Republicans to congress.

[My Pet Orangutan]

5. Agreed.

cf. AZ and NV. The national exit polls don't prove anything by themselves.

But don't quote Henry "I campaigned against M.J. Hegar" Cuellar to me. Texans assured me that 'a Trump favorite Democrat' was popular in the district, but he almost lost in his shirt in the primaries.

[JCMach1]

8. It's the ES&S machines used in RGV... Counting on no

One going down there to investigate in the middle of a pandemic

[LeftInTX]

9. Don't believe me, continue to believe in "magic demographics"...

The Biden camp did not campaign down there and took it for granted. The Democrats thought this area would be a gold mine, if they would "just vote". Instead, the Republicans were down there campaigning.

The South Texas residents who voted for Trump did so believing he would improve their job opportunities and support law enforcement. Many are Catholic and could not get past the Democratic Party’s support for abortion rights. They agreed with Trump’s immigration policies and see recently arriving immigrants as threats to their job security. The agencies provide a wealth of jobs, directly and indirectly, for residents, bolstering support for law enforcement. Calls to “defund the police” strike a deep, negative chord with many who work for these agencies.

‘The Trump effect’ showed up in heavily Hispanic Texas border counties

ZAPATA — Irma Alvarez, a longtime Democrat, didn’t vote for president in 2016.

This year, the 80-year-old did. She chose President Donald Trump.

“Always, always, I was part of the old Democratic Party. But the new party has changed a lot,” said Alvarez, a native Spanish speaker who was born in Guerrero, Mexico. “They don’t understand how things are down here. They just don’t understand.”

For the first time in 100 years, Alvarez’s home county, Zapata, cast most of its votes for a Republican president. With a population of 14,100 — 95 percent Hispanic — this rural county along the Texas-Mexico border has long been a stronghold for Democrats. There isn’t even a registered Republican Party here.

But it gave Trump a win this election with 52.5 percent of the 3,852 votes cast. Four years ago, only 33 percent of voters picked Trump over Hillary Clinton.https://www.expressnews.com/news/politics/texas_legislature/article/The-Trump-effect-showed-up-in-heavily-15725750.php

[My Pet Orangutan]

11. "Many are Catholic and could not get past the Democratic Party's support for abortion rights"

which is why they were more comfortable voting for Hillary than Biden!

[Lucky Luciano]

12. But fuckface did deliver 3 anti choice scotus "justices."

[JI7]

15. They didn't take it for granted. They didn't do ground campaigning

because of covid. That hurt Biden for sure but it was because if safety concerns .

[Rstrstx]

16. Yes I've been looking at precinct data from Cameron County

And I’m seeing consistently the votes from Trump more than doubling their percentages over 2016 in the poorer parts of the county. The precincts right around downtown Brownsville that border the river saw roughly a 12-16% vote for Trump in 2016 jump up into the 30-35% range this time, the difference is striking. Looking further back Romney got around 18-22% in these same neighborhoods.

As an example Precinct 9 is the middle of old downtown Brownsville and is mostly poor, and the vote there broke 68-30.5 for Biden (1017 total votes). Congressman Vela won 75-20. That doesn’t sound too bad until you look at 2016 when it broke for Clinton 82-14 (1099 votes). Vela won 84-16 (no 3rd party). So Trump’s numbers more than doubled and Vela’s opponent Rey Gonzalez improved by 6 points.

It’s interesting to compare that to two wealthier gentrified precincts in old urban Brownsville, 38 and 97, where the numbers changed much less. In Precinct 38, the most prestigious in town, Biden won 59.5-40 where Clinton had won 54-41. Vela won 68-30 versus 69-31 in 2016. In the slightly more modest Precinct 97 Biden took it 67-32 where Clinton won 71-25. Vela slipped from 80-20 to 74-23. So much less movement as you moved towards higher income and presumably education levels.

You can drill down into neighboring precincts and find pretty much the same results (though Precinct 38 has no really comparable area in the middle of town). There are a lot more poor neighborhoods in Brownsville than wealthy ones and you consistently see Trump’s numbers going from the teens in 2016 to over 30% in 2020 in pretty much all of them.

This is striking and the Dems need to get on this if they want Texas to be in play. We will not win a statewide election when a third of inner Brownsville votes Republican. Abortion does not seem like it was a big issue, if it were Clinton would not have pummeled Trump in ‘16. From the atmosphere I can gleam here the Alpha “Strongman” image of Trump had a high appeal factor here and, most of all, the “Law and Order” image. Before we go into a complete panic though it should be noted that even Romney did slightly better than 2016 Trump (and Bush even won Cameron County in ‘04, albeit just barely, so the numbers here are malleable).

[My Pet Orangutan]

17. Thanks for the intel

much appreciated.

[LeftInTX]

18. Thank you for the analysis!

[Lucky Luciano]

19. Worthwhile post! +1.

[LeftInTX]

20. Trump picked up an average of 6% points in inner city San Antonio

Only in the low income areas. These precincts were like 15-18% Trump in 2016. Now they're 20-26% Trump.

There is no ranchero culture in that area, no Trump caravans. Many of the people live paycheck to paycheck and in public housing. In suburban areas Biden outperformed Hillary and since turnout is higher in these areas, overall Biden did better than Clinton in Bexar County.

The ratio for gentrified Hispanic areas held about the same as 2016. They went for Trump around 25% percent in 2016 and around the same in 2020.


In inner city areas, where people don't get out much and have limited means, Spanish language TV is popular and I know that Trump ran tons of ads on Spanish language TV. So maybe that is why there was an uptick for Trump?

Biden won my Republican precinct by 3 votes, but down ballot reverted to 55/44 Republican. Further out in the suburbs, the down ballot effect was even worse. Trump is one despised person..LOL

I heard at one place in the Valley, that all food bank recipients had notes from Trump in each package. Maybe those stimulus checks from TRUMP were what also motivated them...I have no idea.

[Rstrstx]

21. Don't know about the food bank recipients

But personal income in the Rio Grande Valley did actually increase when the stimulus checks were distributed. For many families that amounted to many thousands of extra dollars. I don’t know if they credited Trump for bringing that to them or not.

I have seen articles on sites like Politico (I know, not a shining beacon of journalism) that suggest the Biden campaign didn’t really target South Texas Hispanics in particular and instead just lumped Hispanics into one group. This is believable since there is evidence they did the same in South Florida, which allowed Republicans to seize the narrative. Though no congressional districts flipped down here like in Florida Vicente Gonzalez’ district came uncomfortably close (I would like to say he’s still likely to win re-election in ‘22 but all bets are off with redistricting coming up).

The towns of the Rio Grande Valley are slightly more ranchero than the barrios of San Antonio but not to the same extent as the isolated brush country between Mission and Laredo, there seems to have been a 12-20 point shift to Trump in the Valley area as opposed to the 30-50 point shift seen in some counties out west. These people also largely live on government assistance and are by no means permanent Republicans, that’s why I’m not too pessimistic that this is a long term trend. One major difference between here and San Antonio is the large number of people who are employed by law enforcement and the various DHS agencies along the border, especially in the western rural counties.

What is all too apparent is that this is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed ASAP by the Democratic Party, local party leaders down here need to be listened to and have their concerns addressed. Whoever is running in 2024 needs to take note of this and target accordingly, I can guarantee you the Republicans have taken notice. For the time being I still don’t see a groundswell of support shifting towards the Republican Party here just yet, especially given their penchant for cutting government benefits and - barring a Georgia miracle - McConnell is likely to be the figurehead of their party, at least for the next two years. We just need to remind the good people of South Texas which party is better serving their interests, in a message much more custom tailored to the area.

By the way the coming months are going to be brutal for our local economy as stimulus money has dried up and the continued absence of Mexican shoppers in local stores will take a big toll during the holiday season. That’s not even counting the resurging Covid cases and likely decline in Winter Texas tourism.

[PJMcK]

4. Uh, isn't there a reason our votes are confidential?

How stupid.

[58Sunliner]

6. This election compared to 2016, supposedly only @ 9% more eligible voters voted.

Some time this week I am going to start looking at state by state returns. It seems strange that we had record turnouts in many areas and yet only a 9% increase nationwide. I read that Fla. had 27% of votes not counted due to mail slow down. Don't know if it is accurate. There are several factors worth looking into nation wide, that suppressed or under counted votes.

[Locutusofborg]

7. For the record, Edison Research the main exit polling firm

used by the television networks DID conduct telephone interviews with voters who filed absentee ballots as well as in person interviews at polling stations.
Trump is at 73 million votes. He got 62.9 million in 2016. That's an astonishing increase in support, topped only by Joe Biden in American election history.

[My Pet Orangutan]

10. Telephone interviews are not comparable to on-the-day interviews

immediately after voting. They are different animals.

[uponit7771]

13. K&R, The polling in America absolutely stinks to high heaven and SHOULD NOT be taken seriously until

... they explain how they were so off in 2020.

They were VERY off in a number of key races, PERIOD